Florida Rep. Precourt: Here's Your Mayberry Script

Florida Republican Rep. Stephen Precourt told the Palm Beach Post this week that he'd like Florida to look a lot more like Mayberry (and presumably a lot less like Sodom) -- at least when it comes to cinematic representations. Precourt has proposed a bill that would increase tax credits for film production in the state -- expanding the category of films that qualify for credits. But Precourt still wants to exclude movies that feature gay characters. The move is meant to attract filmmakers who've been abandoning Florida for states offering more generous terms.

Precourt said he grew up in the '60s on TV programs like The Andy Griffith Show and wants Florida to be known for making "those kinds of movies." Evidently Precourt missed the flamingly queer subtext running just beneath Mayberry's

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Precourt: The closet is a very, very fine place to be.

placid Southern surfaces. The spinster maiden Aunt Bee. The unnaturally dysfunctional relationship between Andy and Barney. As hard as he worked at it, Andy could never maintain an LTR with any female for more than a dozen episodes. Who really expected his desperate final-season marriage to Helen to last? And then there's the prancing, mincing barber Floyd, who even got his own episode titled "Floyd the Gay Deceiver."

Precourt's bill would exclude representations of "nontraditional" families. Aiming to define the concept of "nontraditional," Gov. Charlie Crist, whose sham marriage to Carole Rome is about as authentic as his suntan, said: "Let me define it in the positive. A traditional family is a marriage between a man and a woman. That's traditional." And that's show biz.